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Do you know anyone who has moved out of the Bay Area recently? Well you are not alone. According to a recent poll, a third of Bay Area residents said they planned on leaving. Residents are tired of spending more than half their paycheck on housing, couple that with the cost of living, add the terrible commutes and we have a perfect storm here in the Bay.

In addition, over half of the residents polled in San Francisco County said the region was headed in the wrong direction, a massive leap from the only 28 percent who felt the same way last year. This comes from the 2016 Bay Area Council Poll, which surveyed more than 1,000 residents and was conducted by Oakland-based public opinion research firm EMC Research. The annual poll asked respondents how they felt about a constellation of issues that often affect the region, including transportation, housing, economic growth, education, jobs and even the drought. Overall, the poll painted a gloomy picture for the Bay Area, with a majority who answered saying high housing costs are their biggest concern, followed by traffic and the cost of living.

Jim Wunderman, Bay Area Council president and chief executive officer, told the San Francisco Business Times that “Traffic is horrific. People living in the Bay Area spend an average of 78 more hours in traffic than the rest of the nation and the Silicon Valley isn’t far behind at 67 hours. Residents are considering just how much all that extra time is costing them and looking elsewhere. Our housing shortage is pricing workers, families and others out of their homes and out of the region. These problems threaten to erode our economic vitality and diminish our quality of life.”

This isn’t only happening in San Francisco, Silicon Valley residents are now moving out of the area faster than they’re arriving. According to a study conducted by the Silicon Valley Competitiveness and Innovation Project, the California tech corridor lost more than 7,500 residents to other areas of the United States in 2015. That was the first time in four years the area lost more domestic residents than it gained. Techies are leaving for lower-cost tech-friendly cities, such as Seattle and Austin, according to the study. It costs more to rent in San Francisco than anywhere else in the United States. In December, a one-bedroom apartment in San Francisco averaged about $3,620 a month, while a one-bedroom in Seattle averaged about $1,600 a month.

So what can the Bay Area to do keep all its inhabitants happy, thriving and able to afford to stay? That depends on how seriously leaders take residents’ concerns, Wunderman said Yolo, Stanislaus, and Stockton are rapidly becoming spillover housing for the Bay Area. The issue is that we think housing is too expensive which means we need to develop more houses, but the Bay Area Council report found that more residents than not think the region will experience a downturn in the next three years, so this makes developers hesitant to start large projects that could take years if the cost of homes is going to decrease. The Bay Area will always be a desirable place for people to live and nobody can say when this bubble will burst but is the writing on the wall?

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Adam Modzeleski is a real estate professional with Rainbow Funding and Realty, located in Newark for more than 30 years at 6658 Thornton Ave.

Article source: http://www.eastbaytimes.com/my-town/ci_29928631/real-estate-moving-out-bay-area

Home prices in the San Francisco Bay area, the epicenter of the U.S. technology boom and housing-affordability crunch, hit an all-time high last month.

The median price paid in the nine-county swath of Northern California was $686,000 in April, up 4.1 percent from a year earlier, CoreLogic Inc. said in a statement Wednesday. The prior peak was $665,000, reached in mid-2007. House and condominium sales in the region – including Alameda, Contra Costa, Marin, Napa, Santa Clara, San Francisco, San Mateo, Solano and Sonoma counties — totaled 7,518, down 7.3 percent from April 2015, according to the real estate information company.

Silicon Valley tech salaries have fueled a rapid rise in Bay area home prices, putting purchases increasingly out of reach for average workers who have to live in tiny spaces or commute longer distances to find properties they can afford.

“It’s no surprise that in a month when the San Francisco Bay area’s median home-sale price hit a record high, the region also logged a year-over-year decline in sales, which remained well below the long-term average,” Andrew LePage, research analyst with CoreLogic, said in the statement. “Low mortgage rates, job growth and other drivers have stoked demand, but the supply of homes for sale -– especially in the low-to-middle price ranges -– hasn’t kept pace, leaving many would-be buyers struggling with a thin and increasingly expensive inventory.”

The median price for the area has risen on a year-over-year basis for 49 consecutive months, according to CoreLogic. Transactions for $500,000 or more accounted for 69.7 percent of sales in April, the highest share since August 2007, when it was 72.1 percent.

Article source: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-05-18/san-francisco-area-home-prices-reach-a-record-while-sales-slip

SAN DIEGO (AP) — Record highs in the San Francisco Bay area helped lift California home prices to their loftiest levels since September 2007 last month. Sales were soft.

Research firm CoreLogic Inc. said Wednesday that the state’s median home price rose to $430,000 in April, up 4 percent from March and 6 percent from a year earlier. It was the 50th straight annual increase.

There were slightly less than 41,000 homes sold, up 6 percent from March but down 1 percent from a year earlier.

Prices in the nine-county San Francisco Bay area hit an all-time high of $686,000, surpassing its peak in 2007. The median sales in San Francisco County reached an all-time high of $1.3 million.

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Article source: http://kron4.com/2016/05/18/san-francisco-bay-area-lifts-california-home-prices-in-april/

Pick a house, any house.

In San Francisco and Silicon Valley, there’s about a 50 percent chance that it’s worth $1 million or more. The odds are less in Alameda and Contra Costa counties, yet the share of million-dollar homes there has nearly quadrupled since 2012.

“Once a rarity, the million-dollar home is now fairly commonplace” in numerous U.S. markets, said Ralph McLaughlin, chief economist for Trulia. He has authored a new report showing that the San Francisco, San Jose and Oakland metro areas — in that order — have seen the nation’s most dramatic increases in the share of million-dollar houses.

Titled “Million Dollar Creep: Where Seven Figure Homes are the New Norm,” the report says that:

• In the San Francisco metro area (which includes San Francisco and San Mateo counties), the percentage of homes valued at $1 million or more has nearly tripled since 2012, from 19.6 percent to 57.4 percent.

• In the San Jose metro area (Santa Clara and San Benito counties), the share of million-dollar homes has risen almost as sharply, from 17.4 percent to 46.3 percent.

• In the Oakland metro area (Alameda and Contra Costa counties), the share has jumped from 5.2 percent to 19.7 percent.

Lagging behind are the Los Angeles, Honolulu, San Diego, New York and Seattle metro areas. Nationally, the share of million-dollar homes has modestly risen from 1.6 percent to 3 percent.

The price appreciation here reflects a Bay Area-wide problem: the lack of housing supply amid a robust tech economy that creates jobs — and the demand for more housing.

The cycle “is not sustainable,” said Matt Regan, senior vice president of public policy with the Bay Area Council, which recently conducted a poll showing massive frustration over housing prices among residents.

“My home has appreciated by double digits in the last four years,” said Regan, who grew up in Ireland and now lives in Pleasant Hill in Contra Costa County. “It’s nice to see all those euros added to my home value when I look at Trulia or Zillow. But at the end of the day, I am incredibly worried that our refusal to permit and build enough housing to accommodate our growing population will result in an economic downturn. “All that appreciation will evaporate very quickly in the next recession.”

These are the Contra Costa County municipalities where the share of million-dollar houses has risen the most, according to Trulia: Moraga (increasing from 21.6 percent to 70.8 percent), followed by Danville (from 22.2 percent to 69.9 percent) and Orinda (from 47.7 to 92.8 percent).

Trulia also has computed percentages for scores of neighborhoods in the 10 U.S. metro areas with the highest share of million-dollar houses.

In the Bay Area, the neighborhood with the steepest increase is Westwood Park, near St. Francis Wood in San Francisco. In 2012, only 2.9 percent of houses there were worth $1 million or more. Now, 96 percent are in the million-dollar club.

The other four of the top five Bay Area neighborhoods are in the city of San Mateo, including two in its Hillsdale section. All four are in proximity to the Caltrain station in San Mateo, as well as to Highway 101: Ease in getting to work clearly means something to homeowners and adds to the value of a house. The share of million-dollar homes has leapt from 4.9 percent to 85.4 percent in San Mateo’s Fiesta Gardens neighborhood.

The changes in San Mateo are “the epitome of what is happening in the Bay Area,” said Trulia’s McLaughlin. “Many of those are postwar homes that were built for middle-class families earning middle-class incomes. Those homes are no longer being occupied by your typical working or middle-class people.”

A few more examples from the report:

• In Oakland’s Rockridge neighborhood, the share of million-dollar homes increased from 16.7 percent to 84 percent.

• In Sunnyvale’s Raynor Park, the share jumped from 19 percent to 94.4 percent.

• In San Jose’s Almaden Valley, the share rose from 29.4 percent to 79.5 percent.

Some neighborhoods barely registered on the report: Their percentage change was minimal, because they already were so expensive in 2012. Take Palo Alto’s Professorville: Four years ago, 94.8 percent of its homes were worth $1 million or more. Its share today: 100 percent.

Article source: http://www.montereyherald.com/article/NF/20160519/BUSINESS/160519784

Uber is teaming up with the owners of a massive real estate development in San Francisco to offer new tenants a monthly $100 transportation stipend if they agree to go car-free. The money can be used for public transit, taxis, and car-sharing, as long as at least $30 is put toward Uber. The money is being provided by the owners of Parkmerced, a collection of 8,900 apartments in the Outer Sunset neighborhood of San Francisco.

Uber also says it will cap Uber Pool rides between Parkmerced and public transit hubs at $5 by creating a geofence around the property. Anyone taking an Uber Pool trip from the Parkmerced to the Bay Area Rapid Transit’s Daly City or Balboa Park stations, as well as the West Portal MUNI, will pay a flat $5 fare. Riders going from those stations to Parkmerced will also only pay $5.

Parkmerced, which is owned by Maximus Real Estate Partners, says its partnership with Uber, and the $100 monthly stipend, will allow it to avoid having to create more parking spaces as it continues developing its property. “The immediate benefits to residents will be to decrease or eliminate the need for private car ownership, facilitate a more efficient commute, reduce transportation costs, and minimize the need for parking,” said Rob Rosania, founder of Maximus.

It’s the first time that Uber has partnered with a property owner to offer transportation incentives to residents. In a blog post, Uber called it “a building block for a smarter city future and exemplifies the creative ways in which Uber can make it possible for city dwellers to live car-free and connect the transportation network.” The company also cited a recent report released by the American Public Transportation Association, which recommended better connections between public transit and transportation network companies like Uber and Lyft.

“It is great to see business and public interests aligning so that city dwellers can truly take advantage of a suite of mobility services, weaning people off of personal cars, and allowing cities to rethink parking needs,” said Dan Sperling, founding director of the Institute of Transportation Studies at the University of California, Davis.

Article source: http://www.theverge.com/2016/5/18/11691904/uber-parkmerced-maximus-real-estate-stipend-san-francisco